What are the differences in Tweeter materials?


I am curious,

Is there someone that could tell me about the differences between the various materials out there that are used to make tweeters? Both soft and metal type.

What are the materials used in each and what are the sound differences both positive and negative?

Soft Dome Tweeters:
Soft dome, Silk dome, Cloth dome, Polymer dome, Polyamide dome and Textile domes.

(I am very confused in particular between Soft, Cloth, Silk, and Textile?)

Metal Dome Tweeters:
Aluminum, Titanium, Beryllium, Diamond coated, domes and inverted.

Thanks!
mezzanine
Mezzanine,

I'm glad you posted. My comment about the secret pricing structure, I hope, was taken just as some light hearted humour, and nothing more. Someone always seems to be complaining and/or joking about the high cost of some equipment, I just couldn't resist.

Unless I misread your post, it looked like you were trying to compare some of the more common materials to some of the more rare/exotic ones, with an emphasis on soft tweeters. API (Audio Products International), the parent company of several Canadian high end speaker manufacturers (Mirage, Energy, Paradigm, PSB and Athena are the ones I can remember. There may be others as well), make camel hair tweeters. They put them in Energy speakers and I think the original Mirage M series. I know several people that have these tweeters and swear by them. I'm not sure if they are currently going into any speakers but I'm pretty sure you can still buy the raw drivers.
Mezzanine, the Dyn and ScanSpeak tweeters are both very good, the few Morels that I have used had very good response curves and used at the right frequencies are excellent, not as detailed as they could be, but I have also found the Morels to have high HD that is very audible when crossed low.
Just a general observation: I've heard plenty of metal-dome tweeters that sound the way soft domes are reputed to sound, and I've heard plenty of soft-domed tweeters that sound the way metal domes are reputed to sound. I don't think you can make generalizations about the sound character of one or the other.
-Bob